As he watched the door opened and a figure appeared on the top step. It was hard to tell with the distance and the winter clothing, but he thought he recognized her as one of the library volunteers. An older woman, she glanced in their direction and hesitated.
“The coroner’s just arrived but it doesn’t look as though the victim’s been there long. Hours perhaps, but not days.”
“He hasn’t begun smelling yet,” said the young officer. “Those make me want to puke.”
Gamache took a breath and exhaled, his breath freezing as soon as it hit the air. But he said nothing. This officer wasn’t his to train in the etiquette of the recently dead, in the respect necessary when in their presence. In the empathy necessary to see the victim as a person, and the murderer as a person. It wasn’t with cynicism and sarcasm, with dark humor and crass comments a killer was caught. He was caught by seeing and thinking and feeling. Crude comments didn’t make the path clearer or the interpretation of evidence easier. Indeed, they obscured the truth, with fear.
But this wasn’t the Chief Inspector’s trainee, nor was it his case.
Shifting his eyes from the young man he noticed the elderly woman had disappeared. Since she hadn’t had time to walk out of sight he presumed she’d gone back inside.
It was an odd thing to do. To get all dressed for the cold, then not to actually leave.
But, he reminded himself again, this wasn’t his case, wasn’t his business.
“Would you like to come in, sir?” Inspector Langlois asked.
Gamache smiled. “I was just reminding myself this wasn’t my case, Inspector. Thank you for your courtesy, but I’m fine out here.”
Langlois shot a glance at the officer beside him then took Gamache’s elbow and steered him out of hearing range.
“I wasn’t asking just to be kind. My English isn’t very good. It’s OK, but you should hear the head librarian speak French. At least, I think she’s speaking French. She clearly thinks she is. But I can’t understand a word. In the entire interview she spoke French and I spoke English. It was like something out of a cartoon. She must think I’m a moron. So far all I’ve done is grinned and nodded and I think I might have asked whether she’s descended from the lower orders.”
“Why did you ask that?”
“I didn’t mean to. I wanted to ask if she had access to the basement, but something went wrong,” he smiled ruefully. “I think clarity might be important in a murder case.”
“I think you might be right. What did she say to your question?”
“She got quite upset and said that the night is a strawberry.”
“Oh dear.”
Langlois sighed a puff of frustration. “Will you come in? I know you speak English, I’ve heard you at conferences.”
“But how do you know I wasn’t mangling the language too? Maybe the night is a strawberry.”
“We have other officers whose English is better than mine, and I was just about to call to the station to get them, but then I saw you. We could use your help.”
Gamache hesitated. And felt a tremble in his hand, blessedly hidden by his thick mitts. “Thank you for the invitation.” He met the Inspector’s searching eyes. “But I can’t.”
There was silence. The Inspector, far from being upset, nodded. “I should not have asked. My apologies.”
“Not at all. I’m most grateful you did. Merci.”
Unseen by either man, they were being watched from the second-floor window. The window put in a century ago to replace the door. That led to the platform. That led to execution.
Elizabeth MacWhirter, her scarf still on but her coat now in the closet downstairs, stared at the two men. Earlier she’d looked out the window, anxious to turn her back on the alien activity behind her. She sought solace, peace, in the unchanging view outside the window. From there she could see St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church, the presbytery, the sloping, familiar roofs of her city. And the snow drifting gently down to land on them, as though there wasn’t a care in the world.
From that window she’d noticed the man and the dog, standing just outside the cordon, staring. He was, she knew, the same man who’d visited the library every day for a week now sitting quietly with his German shepherd. Reading, sometimes writing, sometimes consulting Winnie on volumes unread in a hundred years or more.
“He’s researching the Battle of the Plains of Abraham,” Winnie had reported one afternoon as they stood on the gallery above the library. “Particularly interested in the correspondence of both James Cook and Louis-Antoine de Bougainville.”